Movie Night
by Sarah Mercury
Summary: Bashir finds an ancient VHS tape and invites O'Brien over to watch. OneShot. Non-Slash; just two friends watching a movie.


**A/N**: I wrote this at about 1am, so forgive me if it seems short and pertinent.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any character, Star Trek or otherwise, nor any movie discussed therein. They belong to their respective owners.

* * *

It took him over six months, almost every favour he had to pull, not to mention having to swear off Holosuites and drinks in the bar so as to accumulate enough Latinum to bribe Quark with, but Doctor Julian Bashir finally found it: an ancient video cassette tape. All he had to do now was borrow something called a VCR from Captain Sisko, who mentioned owning one offhandedly at a staff meeting.

Even though Sisko told him how to set it up, it still took Bashir nearly all day to do it. Halfway through it, he almost gave up, thinking the effort wasn't worth watching a very old movie anyway. He backed away from his wired mess to take a sip of tea, thinking that even though he was Genetically Engineered, he could understand why ancient humans never mastered the VCR.

For the third time, Bashir had to sidestep to nearly avoid tripping on the wires. He was about to kick the damn thing in frustration when his communicator blipped and his very good friend, Chief O'Brien, said over it, "O'Brien to Bashir."

The doctor sighed before answering. "Bashir here," he replied, in his usual calm, British manner.

O'Brien saw right through it. "What's wrong?"

"I'm just having some trouble setting up this VCR thing."

"Are you kidding me? I thought you were joking about that."

"It took me a lot of time and energy to get this movie. We are going to watch it tonight, come hell or high water!"

This time, O'Brien sighed. "Fine. But just take a break for ten or so minutes until I get there. I'm an engineer; I can fix anything."

Bashir smiled and ended the communication. He sat on his couch, sipping his tea as he remembered how he convinced O'Brien to watch this movie with him. A two-dimensional adventure never did sit well with O'Brien, who enjoyed a 'challenge' too much to be entertained by a non-interactive program. But Bashir knew his friend would enjoy an evening away from his wife, whom he spent the last three weeks straight with, eating brussel sprouts and rice. A chance to instead gorge on bratwursts and beer for a change was just what the doctor ordered, so to speak.

For Bashir, however, this night was more than just a chance to hang out with a friend. Six months ago, over a very intellectually stimulating lunch, the station's resident Cardassian, Garak, brought up the topic of ancient, controversial pieces of art in their respective cultures. When Garak started talking about this movie, after the shock of realizing Garak knew more about ancient earth than himself, Bashir found himself intrigued by the plot, and especially the main character, of the movie.

Since then, he made it his mission to acquire the movie. During that time, he remembered exactly _why_ he hated Quark: the Ferengi was so exasperating to deal with that he dreaded walking into the bar almost every day to ask him if he had any leads on the tape. Then he would have to deal with his shrewdness, his ever-stretched out hand, his fake concern, and finally, the arrogance he had every time he told the doctor that he, "hasn't found anything yet".

When finally the tape came in, and after Bashir faked a medical report for Quark to show the FCA that he was in "perfect working health" to renew his license at a discounted fee, Bashir had his movie. He made plans with O'Brien to watch it with him, hoping that afterward, they would have a lengthy debate and he could have another lunch with Garak to express his new-found knowledge.

His only challenge was that damn VCR. It had maybe two wires naturally, but since they didn't make televisions anymore, he had to hook it up to a virtual display device, which added about three more wires and had almost five more setup controls. He only managed to hook up two of the wires, but when O'Brien finally came over to help him, he realized that even those wires were setup incorrectly. The engineer had to keep shoving Bashir out of the way so he could work more freely, and in half an hour, had the VCR hooked up perfectly to the virtual display device.

When O'Brien stepped back to admire his work, Bashir leaned in and pointed to the front of the VCR. "Why is it blinking 12:00?"

O'Brien waved dismissively. "My father owned a VCR a long time ago. He said that it always does that and no human had yet to figure out how to change it. But it should still work."

Bashir picked up the cassette tape on his end table and gingerly put it in the VCR. He snapped his hand back in shock as the machine automatically pulled it in and clicked it into place. Then it started to whirr, clicked two more times, and was silent. O'Brien pushed a button on the virtual display device to activate it, and as it came on, the two of them stared at a completely blue screen.

"Is it supposed to look like that?" Bashir asked, confusingly.

"Yeah; until you press 'Play' on the VCR. So where's the beer?"

Ten minutes later, after they surrounded themselves on the couch with beer, hot dogs and sausages, Bashir got up, pressed 'Play', sat back down and took a large bite out of a well-deserved bratwurst. He still had a huge chunk in his mouth when O'Brien asked, "So what movie are we watching anyway?"

"If umph rumphumph umph," the doctor replied.

"Huh?"

He swallowed. "It's called 'Re-Animator'. It's about a genius doctor who raises the dead."

O'Brien raised an eyebrow. "Raising the dead? It's not a horror film, is it?"

"You're not afraid, are you, Chief?" Bashir gave him a friendly wink.

"No," he answered, defensively. "I just don't like gory horror films."

"Are you kidding? We engage in the Battle of the Alamo almost every week!"

"That's different; we _engage_ in it. This is just us sitting on a couch, watching a movie." He eyed his half-eaten hot dog and added, "I hope I don't lose my appetite."

"Oh, shush! It's starting!" The two were silent (except for the scarfing sounds coming from O'Brien, as he put a handful of chips in his mouth), as the movie opened to a hospital in Switzerland. Awed by the primitive, two-dimensional form of entertainment that ancient humans had to muddle through, Bashir thought briefly back to his history class in medical school. There, he watched a movie originating from the 1950s that talked about how doctors dealt with medicine back then. It was supposed to make his class appreciate how good medical science is now, but Bashir always found it intriguing, thinking that the old ways are sometimes the best ways.

Which is why he instantly hooked on this movie. Anything that discussed medicine in ancient times, even if it _was_ science fiction, fascinated the doctor. He was still sort of in a nostalgic stupor that when O'Brien suddenly pushed him in the shoulder and almost yelled, "Pause it! Pause it!" the doctor nearly jumped out of his skin.

He grabbed the controller in front of him, on the table next to the pretzels, and hit the pause button, just in time for the main character of the movie to look up and his face be caught in the still. "What is it, Chief?" Bashir asked, trying to keep his heart from pounding in his ears.

O'Brien pointed. "That guy. Does he look familiar to you?"

Bashir analyzed the character a bit before saying, "That's the main character of the movie, Herbert West."

"No, I mean, look at him. I swear I've seen him before."

Bashir peered at the still again. There was a definite familiarity about him, but he shook it off. "He's an actor from the 20th century. He's been in dozens of other films. He's long dead now, though. I doubt even Dax has seen him before."

O'Brien raised an eyebrow briefly, but then shrugged and grabbed another hot dog. Bashir unpaused the film and put the controller back down. He leaned back in the couch, hoping there wouldn't be anymore 'familiar' actors to O'Brien, as he wanted to watch the movie without interruption.

After most of the chips were digesting in O'Brien's stomach, more and more pretzels were consumed, the beer was eventually switched to coffee and tea, the movie had to be paused on several occasions for bathroom breaks, and the hot dogs and sausages were long gone, leaving behind them a wake of ketchup stains and oil. As the movie was entering its last stages of production, Bashir was beginning to notice the ever increasing boredom from his friend, accentuated by the yawn he tried to stifle.

Once the credits started rolling, Bashir picked up the remote again and turned the VCR off. With the glow of the blue screen from the virtual display device, Bashir turned to O'Brien and said, "You didn't like the movie, did you?"

And O'Brien, being the always-polite man that he was, sat up straighter and assured his friend, "Oh, no! It's not that I didn't like it! I just, you know, prefer Holosuites."

"Well, aside from it being a two-dimensional adventure, how did you like it?"

He patted his stomach and joked, "I didn't lose my appetite, at least."

Bashir sighed frustratingly. He wanted a discussion about the film, not avoidance. "What did you think of the main character?"

"That Herbert West guy? He was one evil bastard, huh?"

"Evil? He was a genius!"

O'Brien scoffed as he picked up some crumbs from the pretzel bowl. "Did you even watch the movie? He murdered people and even cats, just to prove that some inhumane serum worked. And it didn't even work!"

"It worked! It brought back the dead! There were obviously some technicalities to work through, but he would have done it, if they gave him a chance to."

"Julian, I understand why you, a doctor, would give him the benefit of the doubt; a chance to revive the dead? That's every doctor's dream. But there is a line in medicine that shouldn't be crossed. What he did not only crossed it, he built a bridge with the dead bodies to get there."

"All he wanted was for someone to take him seriously. All throughout his life, he was met with criticism, doubt, shame, condemnation… He was trying to do something for people to look at him with respect and recognition. He made a few wrong turns, yes, but in the end, don't we all want to be remembered for something? Besides, he never technically murdered anyone. Except the cat, of course."

O'Brien gave him a sideways glance and Bashir winced. He forgot how important Chester was to him. The Chief said, "You know, back in the 1940s, a lot of people thought the Nazis were medical geniuses."

Bashir rolled his eyes. "I knew you'd compare West to a Nazi. They are totally different! The Nazis took living, breathing people and savagely tortured them until they died. West took already dead people and tried to give them a second life. If anything, he was the opposite of a Nazi."

"Sometimes, Julian, when someone dies, they should stay dead. It is more torturous to force someone who has already passed on to come back. It's selfish, too."

"If Keiko were murdered, wouldn't you want to bring her back?"

O'Brien sighed. "If it were her time to go, I would have to accept that. Bringing her back from the dead just because I missed her would be, as I said, selfish."

"You tell me that when you're in that position."

Tired, bored, and a little miffed, O'Brien got up from the couch. He said, as evenly as he could, "Hopefully, that won't happen for a very, very long time. Good night, Julian." And with that, he left Bashir's quarters, leaving the doctor to sit on the couch, bathed in the blue light from the virtual display device, wondering not for the first time if all the effort he put into getting this movie was worth it after all…

_**EPILOGUE**_

A few days later, Bashir was sitting in the Replimat, not drinking his tea, nor eating his scone. He felt a familiar presence whisk around his table to the other side and sat down in the empty chair. The Cardassian analyzed Bashir's unhappy face a bit before asking a question he of course knew the answer to, "Why do you look so upset?"

And Bashir, constantly giving Garak the benefit of the doubt even when he knew he didn't deserve it, answered, "You know that movie we were talking about a long time ago? I got it, and Miles and I had some, er, different opinions."

Garak blinked in fake concern. "But the Chief doesn't seem as upset as you."

"No, he's already forgotten about it. That's what friends do when they're on opposite sides of the fence."

"So why are _you_ still upset?"

Bashir sighed. "I liked that movie, but maybe Miles is right? The dead should stay dead. I guess thinking of myself as some God-like doctor who could cure anything is premature."

He chuckled embarrassingly before sipping his cold tea. Garak smirked and said, "That movie was created for purely entertainment value, not to teach over-achieving doctors the value of humility. Although, it pleases me to know that you can still learn something, and that your head is deflating a bit."

"Okay, Garak, I get the point." He almost inhaled his scone, and after swallowing it, added, "Obviously I should just stick to what I _can_ cure for now."

"That's the spirit! However, if you're interested, I do have access to another so-called 'movie'."

Bashir raised an eyebrow. "An ancient earth video cassette? How would you have access to something like that?"

Garak waved a hand dismissively, as he often did when he didn't want to explain how he achieved the impossible. "The 'how' is unimportant. But if you like adventures about a misunderstood hero battling a cunning, ruthless enemy, you will love this."

"What is it?"

"It's called 'Dirty Harry', and it's about a law enforcement person trying to catch the ever-elusive Scorpion…"


End file.
